


the night of the hunt

by deepscholar



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Fictional Religion & Theology, Victorian Attitudes, Were-Creatures, alternate perspective, flowery, healing church, hiding from the hunt, perspective of a random yharnamite, wolf beasts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-23 12:19:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12507264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepscholar/pseuds/deepscholar
Summary: when night comes black and sharp, some men hide, others cling to faith; some men hunt, and some accept and revel in the pestilence of the beasthood.this shall follow the perspectives of one of each of these men.





	1. he who hides

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [EDIT: 28/06/18: ive since become a walking bloodborne encyclopaedia and thus know of the many inaccuracies in this so just overlook those ple]

_And the night begins again, and with it, the hunt._

Tonight, men bury themselves in the scriptures of Our Ancestors and pray for cleansing of the Beasthood which lurks, the Scourge of our City and these reddened Soils.  
Men with withered hats and tattered cloaks and dirtied Metal whetted sharp go striding out from burrows of houses and creaking down from roofs, and Men of the same fabric come in from Outside and hold Pistols and mighty Axes and threaded Canes at their waists.  
They come for the Hunt, for they are the baying Hounds of the Hunt, they are those blood-starved Dogs which come bowling down these wretched Streets in this cursed Town. The Beasts of the Scourge they desire to rend, and rend they do, and rended they are by the very same Beasts; and by the great fat Crows who eat the Babies of the poor Women, and the snarling and mangy Strays with blackened and flaxen pelt, and the Madmen who roam with Torch and Fork and slashing Blade and tell the Hunters to burn, burn.

Men whose Will shan't be heard, and whose Blood shall mayhaps be shed and gorged upon, and who cannot shed beastly Blood for the pure mortal Weakness which possesses them – these Men are Men like I, who dwell hidden within Walls marked homely, and who dwell with Hope in the Hearth of what should be safe, for the Beasts shan't break into these Walls seeking to sup when there is Blood flowing free in the Cobbles outside.

This Night is cold, and riddled with Beasts. Scarcely had I managed to drag my Boots home before those Wretches who rise at the earliest times could have dogged down my steps. One such Beast, a great and wolfish Daemon of the Scourge who must have once been a Man I knew, came so close to my Heels but once, and his Breath grew so present at my Back, that I almost heard the gnashing of his ghastly Fangs when I came shuffling in and bolted the Door behind me.

My left Leg is twisted and cursed, so that when I walk it is pulled at my side as one pulls an extra weight. A Man with a Mask whose countenance was that of a Bird once offered to saw the wretched Thing right off my Body, but I saw through the Holes in the pale Material and I peered through to the malign glimmer in his black and shadowed Eyes, and denied his Offer for I saw the Beasthood, tied by a Leash and yet simply waiting for Blood and for Flesh. He should have taken me and devour'd me quite wholly, and then told to any who might have asked that I had died during the Operation! Though truly he would have to do no such Thing as the latter, for who in Yharnam asks after a Man who has vanished when such Things are common occurrences? 

So I live with crippled Leg, and with cowardly fabric of Heart; the wolfish Beasts, I hear them passing by my House, which lies wedged into the outward Corner of a crowded Street, and each time I hear them I tremble and wish I was like the devout Man of the Church who doth pray to wash away his Doubts and Fears. But the Healing Church is a Thing of Evil, I say, it is a Sham! for Whatever has been delivered unto us by their o so holy Hand? Ay, Nothing! They have healed none of my Pains, nor the Pains of this Town. Perhaps this Scourge of Beasts is even their very own doing! They dwell up there in their shrouded Peaks and their kingly Churches and toil but leisurely o'er the Words and the Traces of the Eldritch Presences which patch these Lands. Nary do the Clerics of flowing Robes and ruddy Cheeks come tottering from their Parishes and live amongst us Souls of Yharnam who suffer to walk the very Streets. Out with them, I say, and blast them! Perhaps soon the Beasts shall find a Hunger within them for the sweetened Flesh of the pious, and the Healing Church Bastards shall find their Work is for nowt. The Gods are nothing to me, but alas, I pray for this Day.

The Days now become nonexistent. There is no need for Calendars, not when each Night feels a Year and each Day feels but a fleeting sweep of Light o'er bloodied and tattered Roofs. This Town is finished. Ah, It was always destined for this. Cruel tentacled Gods and other Things stick and feed from these Streets made perpetually wet by clotted Blood in the Pavements. This Hell must be Heaven to the Things which live on none but Suffering.  
Here I sit hunched by Candlelight, which soothes me though the Night is still pale. It presses through my Window, reddish, purple, bordering on Darkness, crepuscular. One could still at this point endeavour to stand on the Streets and not be torn to Pieces within a matter of Minutes. But those sordid and mangy Souls who await only the Fury and the Madness of the Hunt, those Souls who we call our Neighbours, they creep now from their Dwellings and roam the Streets. I saw as I began my Walk home, earlier Today, a Soul of this Variety come crawling from beneath a half-tipped Stagecoach by the side of the Street, and he reached for me with his grotesque and bloody Fingers and gurgled, “The Hunt is afoot this Night! Cursed Beasts shall feel my Metal!”  
In Fright I made Haste to return to my House. Yet soon following my increase in pace, a horrendous and frightful snarling Howl, baying and guttural, rose in the distance, far off enough that I should predominantly hear its Echo but still too close for Comfort. The Sky had grown discoloured and rotten, falling into a horrible purple hue. The cruel and cold Shell of the Moon had crept up into its position so subtly and in such an insidious Manner that I had scarcely noticed its Ascent until it glared right upon me, and a taunting, jeering Voice rolled around the Inside of my Head: ' _Run, run, run home, little Man, you are Nothing on the Night of the Hunt!_ '

My Safety is dubious; my Surety of quite Anything is at this point altogether lost, as I hunch here like an injured Rook in the Half-Shell of my small Home.  
I know not when or even if Morning shall come, but what I am certain of is that Hunters from the Inside and from the Outside now roam these Streets, and whilst they are rife and stinking in all their Impurities, borne of Blood and of steely Drive, perhaps they shall play some part in the slaying of those which share that Impurity, and the Morning shall be borne unto Us once more.


	2. he who prays

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i sorta just made up some minor stuff about the jobs of the black healing church clerics bc bloodborne's lore is purposely patchy in places anyway yknow
> 
> im so sorry this took so long, i wrote it very soon after the first chapter but then abandoned it when it was almost finished very quickly, and i can't think of any ways to expand upon it :/
> 
> EDIT: uuuuuuuughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh i am more learned now and the glaring inaccuracies burn my FLESH

I have finished, for now, my Prayers, and now I return to count my Pennies. The Sun sets, large and tragic, in the narrow Windows of the Chapel, and the further it sinks, the less my Pennies are worth; for a Gentleman of the Church may have no Audience among Beasts, and thus cannot pay for much but a Candle on the Day before the Hunt.

Once, a man of the Clergy could tread the paths of the Graveyards around the backs of the Churches, and could lather sweet Blood and flowers o'er the mounds which hid once-loved ones. Now, all of Yharnam is a Cemetery. Well, I say this as if I have ever known any different. I have not. But if I have Faith, I believe in the Healing Church, and so I am proud to feel this Shawl upon my Shoulders, and I am proud to dwell without Fear in this Chapel till the Hunt is through for this Night. I fear no Beast; they are but a petty and creeping Scourge, a Sickness desperate for Vessels. I shall never be ridden by such a Plague as the Plague of Beasts.

The Hunters, once employed by our own Ludwig, they now tread the Streets and Hunt for our People, and we, the Church, the great Doctors, we dissect this Illness, choosing our corrupted Patients from the writhing, bristling, bloody Mass, and plucking from them the means to reach above this vile Cloak of Evil with bright and holy Hand, and to touch Fingers with the Great Old Ones themselves, for we are the gleaming Heart of Yharnam and thus shall sweep it up into Divinity.  
I am of the black Robe, and thus I understand that certain Mad Fibre which dwells in the Hearts of the poor, poor Men and Women of this City. My Robe's tint is synonymous with that fibre, and thus when they look upon me they will know Fear, and they will know of the Church and its Plight.  
We are above this, yet we will turn their foul Skins against them when they claw at us out of Madness, and by the Great Old Ones we will smite away this Plague which busies itself at our Shoes!

Silent am I as I handle my Quill, and I watch the opalescent Pearl Slug slide slow o'er the Altar which standeth ahead. In the front Pew I lean my Paper upon the Wood before me, and my Cloak is drawn close 'round my Body, and I am alone in the candle-musk Cocoon of this Chapel, awaiting with settled nerves the climb of the Sun. Indeed, I have no need for Sedatives, for my Faith leads me true, and thought of our Cause, and of the doings of those draped in white who stand above me, is what keepeth the Colour in my face and the beat in my chest.

Lo! weary do I grow, weary from the stroking of the Candles' soft light o'er me. Soothing, it settles me so against the growl of the Outside Night. Perhaps tonight a Blood Moon shall come, yet alas, I know not if one shall, and shan't pretend to.


End file.
